When Love and Death Embrace
by Dark Lady of the Circus
Summary: Later, people asked what had created her. What god's twisted will had led to a being like her being formed. Had she been able to answer, her answer would have begun with negligent parents. SteliosOC


A/N: This is a 300 Stelios/OC fanfiction. I had the idea, and had started writing it, when I thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be awesome to make this historically accurate?" So I started doing research, and realized that my idea _did not _fit with Spartan history all. So, if I write another 300 fic, _that_ one will be accurate, but, for this one, I'm just trying not to make it too non-believable.

I know that in Sparta, women got battle training. That goes with the above paragraph. The story just works better this way.

Not only am I deviating from historical canon, I'm screwing up 300 canon, as well. I know that Leonidas, Dilios, and Artemis were significantly older than Stelios, but I'm making them pretty close to the same age. Maybe Stelios is just immature and juvenile, and that's why he hangs out with Astinos instead of Dilios.

Artemis is the captain, Astinos' father.

**

* * *

When Love and Death Embrace**

Later, people asked what had created Kassian. What forces had led to a being like her being formed. Had she been able to answer, her answer would have been negligent parents.

Her mother and father had been newlyweds when Kassian was born. Kassian was an accident. In fact, she was the precipitating factor of her parents' marriage. At her birth, her parents were lost in love, lost in each other, especially after her mother produced a son the next year. Their daughter just slipped through the cracks.

Since, essentially, she had no family, Kassian found friends. Other Spartan girls held no interest for her: they were too refined for her brutal nature. When girls failed her, Kassian turned to boys. As a young child, she ran topless through the streets of Sparta's capital with the boys who had not yet gone to the agoge, not knowing that she was refighting the battle of Marathon with legends. Stelios, Dilios, Artemis, and many others, even young Leonidas were all her companions. These boys accepted Kassian into their ranks easily, and soon she was as wild and dirt-smeared as any boy. One day, a boy named Theron (known to all as the city coward, and five to one odds among the others to not survive the agoge) mocked Kassian's clumsiness.

Kassian broke his nose.

She was all knees and elbows and muck, but she had a nasty right hook, near-supernatural speed—when she didn't trip—and was daring to the point of being half-crazed. Times were never boring in Kassian's company.

Her childhood was idyllic. She ran wild and unchecked during the days and spent the nights with one of her friends, so as to not disturb her parents or brothers, whose number had grown to three.

But everything idyllic has to end. One by one, her friends disappeared, some never to return. First, it was older boys whom Kassian barely knew. Then her best friends began to vanish. They went for glory, for duty and honor. They went for Sparta. They went with this knowledge, so they went with smiles as their mothers screamed. They went to their doom.

Dilios was the first of Kassian's close friends to depart. He assured her that he would return with ample tales, and would give Theron—who had gone a year before—hell for her. Artemis left next, then Leonidas. Last departed Stelios. He promised never to forget her, and hoped to find her just as mud-spattered and crazy when he returned.

After the agoge claimed her friends, Kassian didn't know what to do with herself. The remaining boys were much too young for the proud six-year-old to associate with, and the girls were as uninteresting as ever. Then Kassian had another idea: she could be a warrior, too. She still had one of her father's swords—stolen on a dare from Dilios—and a shield nicked from a guardroom—for a "duel" she and a boy named Thanos had fought. She found a deserted courtyard in an empty house, and moved these treasures from their hallowed place in her mattress to there.

Kassian's knowledge of swords was spotty, at best. For her "training" she tried to recreate exercises she'd seen her friends' fathers doing, but soon hit a wall. So she focused on making her body strong and agile. Kassian knew that her friends would teach her weapons when they returned.

So she ran. She ran across the beautiful countryside of Sparta until she could run no more. Then she collapsed, drank water, caught her breath, and resumed running. Four days a week she ran. Two days she spent in "her" courtyard, with her too-big sword and too-heavy shield, strengthening her arms. On the final day of the week, she rested, and gave thanks to the gods for making her a Spartan.

* * *

The years flew by like whispers on the wind through the golden fields. Kassian grew into her knees and elbows, and out of her dirt smears. She grew into a beautiful young woman, with long, dark hair braided with strands of gold to show her status as a woman of Sparta, smooth golden skin, and brilliant, fiery green eyes. Her limbs were lean and strong, her body was powerful, and her mind was sharp. She still trained strenuously, but worked her body only during the mornings. The afternoons were dedicated to honing her mind. She lived for the day her friends would return from the agoge. No other man—nor the appreciative glances they gave her with increasing regularity—existed for her. 

Then her world fell in.

Dilios returned.

When she was out in the fields, she saw a man approaching the capital, dressed in a Spartan soldier's crimson. But he was not any of the patrolmen she recognized. She strained her eyes for a glimpse of his face, and her heart leaped. Dilios. Not only had he survived, it was apparent he had passed with flying colors. He was a warrior—every one of his muscles seemed to sing as it moved—tall, scarred, and broad-shouldered, but still her Dilios. Undeniably her Dilios.

Or so she thought.

After seeing him, she raced back to the city to prepare herself for his arrival. As he walked through the gate, she was the first to greet him, even before his mother. She ran up, breathless, and tipped her head back to meet his gaze, remembering when she could look him directly in the eyes.

"Dilios?" she asked. "Dilios? Is it truly you?"

"Yes," he answered, his tone puzzled, studying her face. Then the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. "Kassian?"

"Yes." She pulled him into her arms, unashamed. She had waited for this moment for seemingly innumerable years. "Oh, gods, I have missed you."

He disentangled himself from her, backing away to a respectable distance. "It is not proper for us to be seen like this if we are not courting."

Her face crumpled a little. She had lived this moment so many times in her mind, she had it planned word-for-word. But things were not going according to plan, so she skipped ahead a few lines. "Okay…well, walk with me, then."

They strolled through the market they had terrorized as children. Kassian tried to reminisce with Dilios, but it was useless. "Those times seem far away now," he said. Kassian's heart broke a little more. Those times where the only things that had kept her living in his absence.

Awkward silence stretched between them, a sharp contrast from their earlier friendship, which had been as easy as breathing.

"So," Kassian finally said, since Dilios was not volunteering any information, as he usually did. "Tell me about the agoge."

His expressive, eloquent face was a pinched stone mask. "I do not wish to speak of that."

He did not remember the times he would talk about, and he did not wish to talk about the times he could remember. The situation was spinning out of Kassian's control, and quickly. She tried another tack. "After you left, I tried to teach myself the sword. But I had nothing to learn from. My knowledge was minimal. I'm so glad you've returned—now you can teach me to be a proper warrior, like you!" She smiled brightly.

"Women have no place bearing arms, Kassian. Forget that foolish dream."

Hurt swamped her. Kassian inclined her head to him. "I see. Very well. Good day, Dilios." She walked off with her head held high, and no sign of tears. Only the hard could call themselves Spartan. She bought a pomegranate from a helot merchant, and spent the rest of the day staring into a fountain and thinking.

When Artemis returned, Kassian was there. He disappointed her even more than Dilios had. She ate another pomegranate, and thought some more.

Her friend Leonidas did not just return—he returned a king. Kassian tried to catch his eye, but he ignored her. On top of Dilios and Artemis, it was as if he had ripped out her heart and spat on it. She couldn't get over Leonidas' rejection with quiet contemplation. She had to move.

So she ran, until her anger and hurt and frustration at all her apparently wasted years had drained, and Spartan steadiness returned. After this run, her routine resumed undisturbed. She ran, she exercised, she learned, and she ignored all men.

* * *

"Who _is _that woman?" 

Diadromas and Xiphos, two men a few years older than Dilios, stood with the storyteller.

Kassian passed by their spot every morning on her way to market for her breakfast.

"She has a beautiful body."

"I'll bet she's a tiger in bed. Do you know her, Dilios?"

He nodded. "Aye. But I do not suggest pursuing her. She likes to think of herself as a warrior. It's our fault, really. We tolerated her when we were children, and she has not been able to move on from childhood."

"Oh! She's the one who gave Theron what-for! That's _her_?"

"Aye."

"I'll bet she's a _tiger_ in bed."

Dilios sighed. He knew that there would be no way to dissuade Diadromas or Xiphos from their fantasies, but they really had no idea. These men hadn't known Kassian when she was a child. When he had looked at her, he could see the same half-wild feral cat she had been in girlhood snarling back from her emerald eyes. The men pursued her at their own peril.

When a few others returned, Kassian stood in the crowd at their official welcome, but after Dilios and Artemis' brush-offs, did not try to speak with her former friends.

She only ran two days now, drilled one, and prayed one. The other days she sat on a bench in the market, pomegranate in one hand, book in the other. She had never liked the fruit much when she was younger, but now found that she had a taste for it. Whenever she ate a seed, she thought of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter. Persephone was so beautiful that she caught the eye of Hades, god of the Underworld. One day, Persephone and her maids were gathering flowers in a meadow, when Persephone wandered away from the others. Hades seized his chance, and carried her down with him into darkness. Demeter, goddess of the harvest, was devastated. Her daughter had been the light of her life. Nothing grew, and a great famine descended across the world. Finally, the people's suffering was too much for Zeus. He decreed that Persephone could return—if she hadn't eaten any of the food of the dead. But Persephone had eaten a few pomegranate seeds. So Zeus compromised. Half the year, she would rule as Queen of the Underworld. The other half, she would spend with her mother. Whenever Persephone departed her, Demeter was always crushed, and nothing grew, but when her daughter returned, meadows, gardens, fields, and forests burst forth with radiance.

Kassian wanted that. She wanted to be desired, and not in the crude, rough way she knew many men desired her. She wanted a man who would swoop up and carry her off in his arms, even if he was Hades himself. She wanted the Big Love, but it seemed that no man wanted a wife who could equal them at anything, much less in the domain of combat. For, even if she could not best anyone with a blade, her skill barehanded was formidable. She resigned herself to only experiencing her heart's greatest desire, to be loved for herself and all that herself was, through stories. She popped another seed into her mouth.

Kassian soon grew tired of sitting around like a shrub, moping. No matter ho despondent her mind, her body was not made to be stationary.

* * *

There were no careers appropriate for a woman of Sparta aside from wife, or mother. However, helot—slave—women could do many kinds of work and still remain women. Kassian chose healing. It was ideally suited to her. Kassian had never minded blood, and the healer's garb was conductive to secrecy. They wore shapeless gray dresses and veils, and were virtually indistinguishable from one another. 

More years flew by. Instead of being borne on whispering winds, these years passed in a whirl of blood and screams. Warriors learned to make shield and sword and spear as part of their flesh. Kassian learned to do the same, with needle and herb and bandage. She genuinely loved healing, and had realized that it came naturally to her. She gained a reputation for being talented, stubborn, and utterly merciless—dangerous qualities in a slave girl.

It was late one night, and stifling. The other healers had departed, and Kassian was alone when the doorwarden brought the wounded man in. "Another?" she asked, more to herself than him. "Are we battling the whole army of Persia, along with Argos?"

Silent as ever, the helot doorwarden departed, leaving her alone with her patient. Long ago she had stopped seeing her patients as people, instead regarding them as a collection of wounds only. This one was a nasty gash on the hairline, and a similar one across the chest, both crusted with dirt. Kassian sighed. Was not bathing some fundamental part of being a man?

"Bath," she ordered abruptly, catching him off-guard.

"What?"

"Bath," she repeated, pointing to a sunken tub in one corner. "Now. Wash your hair, but not your body. Soak. Let the water clean your wounds. And be careful with your face. Then, after bath, food. Then treatment."

"That is completely unnecessary! Just give me a salve and let me leave. It's nothing major. A flesh wound!"

She elbowed a spot a few inches from his chest wound, and he staggered. "See? And infected, too. You Spartans are lucky that you don't wear armor or there would be cloth and metal trapped in there, which would be even more painful."

"Well, of course it's going to sting a little if you attack it!" He retorted.

She made a derisive noise, waving at the corner again. "You. Bath. Now. I'll return with food. You had better still be here or consequences will be dire."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "As in?"

"As in this will take rot and you'll die. Painfully. Won't that be a _beautiful_ death, an _honorable _death?" He flinched. "Bards will sing about you for centuries." She elbowed him again on her way out to make her point.

For some reason, Spartan citizens were forbidden in the city's storerooms, but helots could come and go as they pleased. Since Kassian had been living like a helot—and nobody knew she was, in fact, free—she got the soldier's food directly from the stores, instead of having to go through a kitchen lave. Normally, there would have been someone present to run errands for the healers, but he had gone home with the others. If Kassian wanted anything done at this hour, she would have to do it. She grabbed a large plate and filled it with whatever was at hand: bread, cheese, fruit. The fires were out for the night, so no meat. The warrior would have to survive somehow.

The warrior held his hand over his chest wound, not touching it, for if he did, the pain brought was like being slashed afresh. Maybe the healer was right. He stripped, and sank into the bath. The water was deliciously hot. Hot springs, he knew. The agoge wasn't just about battle tactics and physical training. Spartan boys also learned singing, dancing, how to be witty—this particular soldier's favorite part of the whole ordeal—etiquette, mathematics, and geography. Endless lessons of geography. The terrain of Greece was friendly to Greeks who knew her, and extremely hostile to outsiders. So the tutors made sure that every new batch of Spartans _knew_ Greece like they knew their mother's face. So. Hot springs. That's why…

He was asleep before he finished the thought.

Kassian reentered with her platter, and saw that the man was asleep in the bath. At least he had washed his hair and combed it out before his nap. And, asleep, he wouldn't be fooling with his wounds and making everything harder on her. She set her platter on a table and sat, watching him.

His hair was long, dark, and—now that it was clean—shining. His body was muscled, of course, but it was leaner muscle than most Spartans. This man would be fast, graceful—and deadly. His chin was covered with a light stubble, and his face, which seemed to be intended for smiling, was incredibly handsome. Of course. He was a Spartan.

Kassian surprised herself by noticing this man's good looks. He was her _patient_. And, besides, he wouldn't notice _her_. Even if he could see her face, he would think that she was just another slave girl, below his attention. But still, as she looked at him, her heart beat faster, and she felt a tingling in her belly. She'd never felt like this before.

He awoke to find her looking at him. "Yes?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I was waiting for you to wake up," she replied. "Or did you plan to sleep until the end of time?"

"I planned to sleep until my healer returned to give me a bandage and send me home."

"Oh, if only you knew what was in store for you," Kassian said, smiling evilly.

"They're minor wounds! Scratches, only!"

"Yes, my lord. And they're infected. Get out of the bath."

She was a healer. She was clinical. She didn't see men as men, but as wounds, to be treated and sent on their way.

Or that was what she liked to think.

For once, Kassian was glad for her stifling veil, which hid the blush on her cheeks.

Smirking, the soldier re-donned his leather, but left his cloak off.

Kassian turned her back on the soldier to get her disinfecting salve and to fight for her composure. She knocked some white powder into a bowl and added water, stirring it into a paste, and adding a mint leaf.

"Mint?" the soldier asked.

"The smell of burning flesh is always unpleasant," replied Kassian. "Food first. I don't want you fainting on me."

"Spartans do not _faint_," he informed her, grabbing a huge hunk of bread and an apple.

"My mistake. I'm sorry that there's no meat, but the fires were out for the night. And I figured that if you wanted it raw, you'd have taken a bite out of a goat on your way here."

He couldn't retort as he had shoved the whole loaf of bread into his mouth.

"Oka-ay," she singsonged a moment later. "Healing time!"

"This whole thing is ridiculous. It would have been so much easier if you had just given me a bandage. Both of us would be in bed now."

"Perhaps," she acknowledged. "But bed is probably a lot more appealing to you than to me." The paste had congealed a little, so she resumed pounding it. "You probably have a beautiful woman waiting for you."

She spread the paste on his chest and forehead. That her fingers were soft was his last thought before the fire took him. He had been wounded before, been disinfected before, so he expected burning, but it had never been this intense. However, he was a Spartan, taught from birth to ignore pain.

"Actually," he replied through gritted teeth. "I have no wife."

She looked at him blankly. "So?"

He shrugged, though it caused a new wave of fire to ripple through his body. She was only a slave, so what did she know of honor? Though she did have a point. He had often been the object of ridicule among the other men for his inexperience. All Spartans held honor in high esteem, but he had an inflated sense of honor, even for a Spartan, and that included bedding only his wife, a woman whom he had yet to find.

The fire vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. The healer was wiping her death salve off of him. He couldn't see the state of his forehead, but the area of red-colored flesh around his chest wound was already receding.

"Excellent," she grinned, her moment of softness and self-pity gone. "Now the real fun begins." She grabbed a needle. "Shall I use white, or would you prefer a more jaunty color to impress the ladies?"

"Stitches are unnecessary for this paltry scratch!" he protested. "You disinfected, now we're done. You need to go to bed."

"Why are you so concerned about getting me in bed?" she demanded crossly, not knowing what she implied, threading the needle with pink thread and sticking it into his chest.

"It's just that you seem tired," he said quickly. She was obviously an innocent, not like the helots his brothers-in-arms visited. He respected her for that. But he didn't respect her for her method of healing, which was, in a word, brutal. Maybe Leonidas should just have sent _her _to battle the invading people of Argos.

"It could be worse," she said conversationally, tying off his chest and moving on to his face. "I could have just melted your flesh together with a hot spear tip."

Kassian realized that in order to get the best angle with her needle, she would have to sit on the soldier's lap. She did so without hesitation. When she had a wounded man before her, nothing could distract her from her task. Not etiquette, not protocol, not even caring what others might think. Nothing.

His eyes were beautiful. Gray. And not a gloomy, stormy gray, or the dull gray of helots' clothing, but a beautiful silver-gray that sparkled even in the limited torchlight.

She was totally undistractable. Of course.

"That's true," the soldier admitted, trying to match her casual tone. His voice was strained again, but not from pain. She weighed more than he expected her to, so, under her shapeless, baggy dress, she was either well-muscled, or very fat. He guessed the former. And despite the sickening feeling of the flesh of his face being pulled and prodded this way and that, her presence was very…distracting. He tried to stop his mind from wondering what she would feel like under him. Even if she were a free woman of Sparta, those thoughts would have been inappropriate, but this was a helot. A slave. He had to get himself under control!

She tied off the thread, and spent rather too much time making sure it was just right. Even with his wounds closed with pink, which would have left any other man looking foolish, he was still gloriously handsome.

They had fought like a pair of harpies earlier in the night, but as the night wore on, it wrapped them in a soft blanket. They still felt connected, but the aggression of their connection was replaced with tenderness.

She stood up and dusted off her skirt. He stood as well, fingers instinctively feeling the stitches on his forehead, then reaching out to brush against her veil. "Let me see the face of the woman who healed me."

Her eyes widened, though he could not see this. "No!" she protested.

"Come." His voice was soft. "You have nothing to fear."

He pushed. Her dull gray veil slid to the floor. Gold winked in the torchlight.

Spartan citizens—women, children, elders, politicians—wore purest white. Helots wore dull gray. This was an easy way to distinguish the two classes. Spartan women also braided their hair with strands of gold after their first monthly bleeding, to indicate that they had reached marriageable age. Helots were not permitted to wear the gold. It would be seen as next to a usurpation by the inferiors, and punishable by death. Kassian wore her healer's veil at all times, except when she was barred in the tiny room she called a home, so she had never bothered to remove the gold she had placed there on her fourteenth birthday.

Now a Spartan citizen—a Spartan soldier—had seen her usurpation. Nobody would believe that she was really a citizen—and why should they? Who in their right mind would abandon a life as a citizen for a life in bondage? So she would be put to death.

She turned to run, intending to vanish into the countryside, hoping—her life depended on the hope—that this soldier would forget her face.

But he was too fast for her. He seized her wrist in a grip of iron, and, with his other hand, turned her face to his. "What is the meaning of this?"

She flinched at his words, but his voice wasn't the yell she expected, but a whisper. Trembling, she looked into his eyes. Silver met emerald over a gulf of years, and everything was understood. She fell into his arms, sobbing. Spartan reserve could go hang.

Kassian had run wild as a child, in the mud with the boys. She had been friends with—or at least known—practically every boy in the city, but she had had four special best friends. Dilios, Artemis, and Leonidas had been a few years older than she, but Stelios had been her elder by only a few months. After Dilios and Artemis' direct brush-offs, and Leonidas' more indirect slight, she had ceased to attend the boys' return. Kassian had probably already been a healing woman when Stelios returned. She hadn't seen him since he was seven, and now he was a man. But there was no mistaking his eyes.

Stelios held her close. When he had returned from the agoge, Kassian, the hellcat from his childhood, had been the first person he looked for, but she was nowhere to be found. He interrogated the others, but they didn't know her location, and seemed remarkably unconcerned that she had seemingly vanished from the earth. How many of them, he wondered, had she healed without their knowing?

"What happened to you? How did you get like this?" he asked.

"When you all left, I was so sad," Kassian said. "I had no family, and no friends. So, I exercised, every day. I worked, every day. I wanted to be a warrior, too. And, every day, I waited for your return. But then Dilios came back. And told me my hopes were…foolish. That I should abandon them. That I should _give up_. And, honestly, I believed him. So I sank further and further, and now, here I am, impersonating a slave for a chance to be near the warriors for a moment."

Kassian had never thought of it that way until the words came out of her mouth, but they were completely true. That was exactly what she was doing. She leaned on Stelios, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Ssh…ssh…Kassian, it's okay."

"No," Kassian said, with a sudden realization. The road of her life stretched behind and before her. The road behind was broken, overgrown, and nearly unusable. The road ahead had but a few steps before it ended in a sheer cliff. "It's not all right. And it never will be."

"Actually, Kassian, I think it will," said Stelios. Then his lips were on hers.

* * *

Kassian and Stelios were married the next week. Years flew by, years borne on laughter and love. Kassian's belly grew, and shrank, and grew and shrank again. Their first two children were daughters. Their life was blissful as Kassian's never was. The elder, Xanthe, was a proper Spartan woman. She associated with other Spartan girls wearing a long, white dress that, after her tenth birthday, concealed a curved steel dagger, a dagger she knew how to use. Xanthe may have been feminine to her core, but she was still Spartan. 

Their younger daughter, Ophelia, was a perfect fusion of her parents. She had Kassian's eyes, but Stelios' hair, hair that was Spartan-dark, but, in the sun, lightened to the color of burnished gold. And she was fierce as ten mountain lions. Kassian made it her principal responsibility to make sure that Ophelia didn't grow up hating her femininity and wishing that she were male. So she ran wild with the boys—as Kassian and Stelios smiled indulgently and shared a wink when she talked about her most especial friend—but had to be home at noon. In the afternoons, her father taught her in their courtyard, just as if she were a son. Kassian insisted on this. When she was younger, jealousy at the time her friends spent with their fathers had chewed her up inside.

Stelios loved his wife and daughters dearly, but he was beginning to fall into despair, the despair of every Spartan soldier, the despair that they would never have a son, that his line would die with him.

One night, he was holding his wife as she slept, and he noticed that her flat stomach was now not quite so flat. He shook her awake immediately, unable to wait until the morning.

"Are you with child?" he demanded, a huge smile spreading across his face.

She grinned back. "Yes, my love." She caressed his face, brushing a thumb across his lip. "I _will_ give you a son. And," she grinned wickedly, and rubbed her slightly swollen stomach, "If this is a daughter, we'll just have to keep trying." She kissed him, then, and to continue on to what happened next would not be chivalrous.

* * *

"Madness? _This. Is. Sparta!_" 

King Leonidas' yell was the death knell of Kassian's time of happiness. She stood with Dilios' wife, Helene, her son in her arms, as the Persian messengers were methodically murdered. A cold shiver clawed up her spine, not at the murder, for they were filthy Persians and deserved it, but at the implications of Leonidas' act.

* * *

"You're going, aren't you, my love?" 

"Yes. It would be the honorable thing to do."

Honor. Despite her sadness, she had to smile a little. Her husband's honor could motivate him to do anything, even a certain suicide. Honor. A beautiful death.

"My love…say goodbye to your son." She handed over the two-year-old boy that all their hopes were pinned on.

He brushed a strand of his son's hair off his brow. Alcinus gripped his father's finger. His grip was strong. Stelios smiled. His son would be a mighty warrior. He returned his son, and took his shield from his wife.

She leaned forward, and brushed his lips with hers, one last time. "Spartan, return with your shield…or die with honor."

Honor. Stelios turned then, and walked out of the courtyard, the crimson cloak that Spartans only wore when going to certain death flapping in the breeze. He turned and looked back, one last time. Silver met emerald over a gulf of years.

All was understood.

Goodbye, my love.

* * *

"Word reached Sparta of the sacrifice of the brave 300, and the city mourned. Families were torn apart, and many never recovered. 

"Kassian was one of these. She loved Stelios so, that when he died, she was lost to grief. And she knew who was to blame—the Ephors. Those inbred swine had condemned her husband to death. It was a beautiful death, something he'd always wanted, but Kassian was selfish in that respect. She wanted her Stelios alive.

"So she took her revenge. All the years of training were to her benefit, for the climb is hard for a tall man, and nearly impossible for a woman, especially a woman carrying a sword. She never learned the finer points of swordsmanship, but she knew where the vital points on a man were, and swung the blade with all her strength. All the Ephors fell dead.

"She killed the oracle as well: a mercy killing, in her mind. After that, there was only one alternative, high in that temple, surrounded by death. She jumped. As she fell, she thought of Persephone, of Hades surging from the earth to carry her into his realm. Her last thought was, 'Hades, come and get me.'"

Dilios finished his tale, and the child on his lap demanded another, tugging at his white beard when he didn't immediately oblige. He was about to begin the tale of the battle of Platea when the girl's mother relieved Dilios of his burden. Hard silver eyes bored into his. "I don't think that particular tale is best for an impressionable girl-child," Xanthe said, voice like ice.

"But I love Grandpa's stories!" the girl protested. "I love Sparta!"

**FIN**

A/N: I hoped you enjoyed it! I wanted to wait to explain the title until down here, because you sort of have to have read the story to understand. The title is from a HIM song. I was listening to the song, when all of a sudden I got a mental image of a woman with a bloody knife jumping off the Ephors' temple. And it just grew from there.

Anyway.

That's the end. But another idea is already brewing! Ha ha!

(review)


End file.
